Jon Turner

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Jon Turner is a British yachtsman boat builder and innovative engineer. Turner has won national or world championships in many racing dinghy classes as detailed below.

Turner was originally apprenticed to Souters in Cowes Isle of Wight building International 14s and Flying Fifteens. When they stopped that type of work Turner went to work for 'Spud' Peter Rowsell, a boat builder in Exmouth with whom he won the Merlin Rocket Championships in 1974 & 1978. He then crewed Phil Morrison to win the Fireball World Championships in 1981 at Weymouth.^[1] Over a fifteen-year period Turner won the British Merlin Rocket National Championship twice as crew (1974 and 1978) and four times as helm (1983, 1984, 1987 and 1988).^[2]

Boat Builder in his own right[]

After 10 years working with Rowsell Turner left to start his own boat building business in 1980, based near Cullumpton in Devon planning to build as a his first boat a new Fireball to sail with Phil Morrison. However, for business reasons Morrison was obliged to sail a new Fireball built instead by Rowsell (with which Morrison and Turner then won the 1981 World Championships), leaving Turner with an empty order book. He then found the first two orders for his fledging business - with Morrison's help - for a National Scorpion 1812 'New Wave' for Andrew Mercer which started the process of significant development within that class's One Design Rules and the following year for a Merlin Rocket 3260 'The Feet' a Morrison designed NSM2 (now in the National Maritime Museum) with which Andy Street won the Class Championships in 1981. With his first two boats, Turner immediately demonstrated the depth of his talent in building high performance wooden racing dinghies and that status is validated by the National Maritime Museum record on 'The Feet', now part of the National Small Boat Collection.^[3]

National Scorpion Class[]

Turner has proved himself an observant, thoughtful innovative builder and developer of fast boats and efficient systems. The long-term benefit of the design ethos that Turner brought to the Scorpion class can be seen today (2021) when that class enjoys a continued popularity unusual for a design from the 1950s with attractive wooden boats which remain competitive for many years. The class has impressively over 100 boats entered for its 2021 National Championships.^[4][5]

Break-through development of raking rigs[]

Whilst Turner is well known for the quality and success of the many wooden boats he has created his most telling innovation in dinghy racing has been his invention of the highly raked rig, which has changed the way that modern high performance dinghies are sailed.

In 1983-84 Turner sailed the Flying Dutchman and was selected as the tune up partner for the British Olympic selection for that class at the Olympic Regatta in Long Beach in 1984. The previous year, as a novice on the boat, after wondering for some time about how and why a Flying Dutchman was so fast sailing to windward in a breeze with a semi-flogging main, powered mainly by the genoa, Turner developed a radical new idea. He wanted to rig his boat with a highly raked mast to try and make the main work more like his genoa in order to test his theory that this would increase the rig's efficiency. This required differently cut sails, in particular a genoa was a much shorter leach. After Hyde Sails (the Flying Dutchman sail specialist of the time) refused make anything so unorthodox, he turned to his old friend Phil Morrison who was much more receptive to new ideas. The result was a significant speed increase in a reasonable breeze. Turner's success with this innovative rig caused a significant stir in the class and ultimately lead to Richards measuring in Turner's own Morrison sails for the Long Beach Olympic Regatta, omitting to also measure in some additional specialist light weather sails as insurance against the expected 12-18 knot sea breeze failing to materialise each day. It was a light weather regatta and Richards collected the bronze medal.^[6]

Turner then successfully applied his raking rig concept to every other class in which he sailed so International 14s, Merlin Rockets and Scorpions all benefitted from his invention. This success resulted in Turner's idea being widely copied with a profound influence over every other high performance dinghy class.

Return to Merlin Rockets[]

Turner returned to his roots after years working in other areas and is again building fast innovative Merlin Rockets as well as inventing and supplying a range of better fittings and systems for racing dinghies.^[7] He collaborates with Morrison on design projects, most recently developing a system for pedalling trans-oceanic rowing boats.^[8]

Championships[]

Turner's racing results include: Merlin Rocket National Champion 6 times; 1973 Albacore World Champion; Scorpion National Champion 3 times;^[9] 1981 Fireball World Champion; 1985 Flying Dutchman National Champion; 1991 International 14 World Champion; 1993 International 14 Prince of Wales Cup Winner; 1993 International 14 European Champion.

References[]